Around 1508, Pope Julius II hired a young artist named Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino to do some frescoing in one of his apartments. He ended up liking the frescoes so much that the job was expanded to further rooms, eventually resulting in the decoration of four apartments now known as the Raphael Rooms. The project outlived Julius, but was continued without interruption under his successor, Pope Leo X, starting in 1513. It also turned out to outlive Raphael, who died in 1520 at the age of 37, and the last room was done by his workshop, with little surviving input from Raphael himself.

The first room Raphael worked on eventually came to be known as the Stanza della Segnatura. The first fresco, finished in 1510, was called The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament, or Disputa for short, a marvel of composition and execution depicting both heaven and earth.



The second fresco, on the wall opposite the Disputa, is possibly the most famous of all the works done by Raphael, The School of Athens. It depicts a school full of famous ancient Greek philosophers, some of which were done in the image of well-known artists of the Italian Renaissance. For example, Plato was painted to look like Leonardo da Vinci, and Euclid was played by Donato Bramante, first architect of the new St. Peter's Basilica. Raphael also includes a portrait of himself, in a group on the right. Sometime during the work on this fresco, Raphael got a peek at the work going on in the nearby Sistine Chapel, and couldn't help adding an additional figure to The School of Athens – the lone figure of Heraclitus, played by Michelangelo. Also at this point, Raphael's work started to become more dramatic and less static, probably influenced by Michelangelo's work.



The other frescoes in this room were The Parnassus, which depicts the Mountain residence of Apollo, and The Cardinal and Theological Virtues, thought to be designed by Raphael but executed by his workshop.

Work on the second apartment began in 1511. This room became known as the Stanza di Eliodoro, being named after the most well-known fresco in it, The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple. This fresco depicts angels tossing Heliodorus out of the Temple of Jerusalem, where he'd gone to try to seize its valuables. Julius II appears on the left this fresco, observing the action.

The Deliverance of St. Peter, also in this room, depicts St. Peter being freed from jail by an angel.

The other frescoes in this room include The Mass at Bolsena and a battle fresco, The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila.

By 1514, when work started on the third room (the Stanza dell'Incendio del Borgo), Raphael, who had been delegating more and more of the work to his assistants, seems to have mostly lost interest in the project. He provided a drawing on which one of the frescoes was based and possibly helped design another, but left his assistants on their own for the other two. All four frescoes were executed by the assistants.

The first fresco, from which the room gets its name, is known as The Fire in the Borgo. It depicts a fire in the Borgo section of Rome in 847, and the miraculous containment of it through a benediction by Pope Leo IV. The second fresco depicts The Battle of Ostia, an 849 naval battle between the Saracens and a league of Christian states. Pope Leo IV appears in this fresco as well, looking uncannily like Pope Leo X. The other two frescoes feature Pope Leo III, who also strongly resembles Leo X. They depict The Coronation of Charlemagne, which happened on Christmas Day in 800, and The Oath of Leo III, depicting the Pope taking an oath of purgation (also in 800) after having been accused of misconduct.





The last of the Raphael Rooms is the largest and had very little to do with Raphael, partly because most of his attention was on other things, and partly because he died part way through its completion. The room is called The Hall of Constantine, and frescoes in this room depict scenes from the emperor Constantine's victories over paganism. The frescoes are called The Vision of the Cross, The Battle of Milvian Bridge, The Donation of Constantine and The Baptism of Constantine. The Pope at this time in history was Pope Sylvester, and in his depiction in the frescoes, he refreshingly doesn't look like Leo X. Coincidentally, Leo X died before the frescoes were finished, and his successor, Clement VII, apparently did bear a Popely resemblance to Sylvester.


The order in which we went through the rooms was not the order listed above. Visitors are herded past all of the rooms, and then brought back through them, first through the Hall of Constantine, second through the Stanza di Eliodoro, then through the Stanza della Segnatura, and finally through the Stanza dell'Incendio del Borgo. From there, the hallway leads in one inexorable direction, toward the grand finale of the visit to the Vatican Museums – the Sistine Chapel.